Ideas from Mark Stout

A telemarketer called me on my cell phone the other day, and I chortled with delight.  Normally, even if you hang up on one immediately as I did, you know they are only going to call back repeatedly. Not this one--or any of them. I use  Google Voice , so I was able to go into my call history and block future calls from that number. From then on when they call, they get the annoying disconnected sound and so they think my phone number is no longer valid. And their call never rings my phone again. If I felt really mean, I could make them their own message talking about the nature of their marketing and perhaps questioning the caller’s life choices. I did not, but the thought that I could is enough to make me chortle on receiving a spam call. Google Voice is not a well-known Google service, but it is one of the most useful. You only need a free Google account. If you already have a Gmail account, you are set.  When you sign up for the actual Voice product, you are given a ph...

Facebook has made it easy to watch a church service, wedding, graduation, baptism or other family event with their Facebook Live feature. If you can use Facebook, you can both create the video feed and watch it. Since many seniors rely on Facebook to stay in contact with family and friends they should be able to find the video feed. Note: This column began in early July after a friend asked about live streaming her wedding later in the month. Just a week later, Facebook Live proved itself not only as a way to share family moments, but as a force of society when Diamond Reynolds streamed from the car moments after her boyfriend Philando Castile was shot. Starting a Facebook Live broadcast is easy. Just aim the camera of your phone at the scene and touch the new post area, the one that says “What’s on your mind?” Note:  Facebook Help on Live Broadcasts Right below your name is the options to send the video to your friends or to the public. For a church service or a wedding, sen...

I've written here many times about visiting aviation museums. Today, chatting online with a friend about China's new Flying Boat that is as big as a Boeing 737, I realized I'd never written about touring a Short Solent Mk. III Flying Boat at the Oakland Aviation Museum at the Oakland, California airport. It must have been sometime in 1999. My wife was working a few hours at her job with a network equipment manufacturer on a Saturday in San Leandro. Our nine year old son and I dropped her off, then went to look for something to do while she worked. I'd ridden my bike past the museum many times, but never stopped in. I explained to my son who Amelia Earhart was as we looked at an Electra aircraft similar to the one Earhart flew when she departed on her fateful flight from Oakland in 1937. Oddly, I do not see that aircraft on their current list of aircraft on display. Update 7-27-2016: The museum director responded to my email and told me the Electra is now at...

Five years ago when the nation was noting the 150th Anniversary of the First Battle of Bull Run, or First Battle of Manassas, I wrote a speculative piece thinking about what tech a survivor of the battle might have seen in his lifetime. I posted it over at the www.FamilyTechOnline.com site.

Soon, some of last month’s high school graduates will have those excited yet fearful knots in their bellies as they head off to colleges and universities. The days of sending them off with a manual typewriter are long gone. A tradition of this column is to consider what we should equip these new freshmen with before they go. It seems this year the picture is clearer than in past years. I think a student needs primarily three devices. Foremost is a laptop. A laptop to today’s young person, and I don’t really need to tell any parent this, is their window to learning and also to entertainment. They will use it to research and write papers, interact with their professors and coursework through sites like Blackboard, and use a variety of online services and software needed for classes. And they will use it to watch videos on Netflix, Hulu and network television websites. Many students will not want to haul a TV to a dorm, content with a laptop. The risk of losing or breaking a laptop that i...

It took a firestorm to learn something about how many people use Evernote. Three weeks ago Evernote announced changes to their service tiers. The Premium price went up, and the Free Basic level was restricted to two logged in devices at one time. Those changes set off a firestorm on Evernote's Forum filling 139 pages in three weeks with complaints, recriminations and threats to move elsewhere.   A common pronouncement among the dissatisfied was  "I am an active user of Evernote. I've created 3000 notes in five years!" They expect Evernote corporate to be impressed by their spirited use of Evernote.  Instead, they underwhelmed me with their Notes per Month rate. I am probably not the typical user.  I have 24,000 notes accumulated over eight years.  That is 3,000 notes a year, or 250 a month. So anyone accumulating 3000 in 5 years is only doing 50 notes a month. I'm going to assume most of these people pay their bills online.  Where are they ...

My wife has returned from four months working and studying overseas with almost 200 photos taken on our Ricoh Theta S camera. I was busy uploading them individually to Ricoh's site, when I had to divert my attention to another project I have on Google Photos . I had not thought of uploading a Theta S image to Google Photos.  I tried it and it worked wonderfully. Instead of having to upload each of my wife's photos to Ricoh's site, I was able to upload the entire set to a folder on Google Drive. Being in Google Photos, it easy to share images with others, add descriptions, and let those you share the images with make comments.